


The Girl Who Loved Wildrider

by QoS



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen, No Romance, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-03-19 10:32:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13702674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QoS/pseuds/QoS
Summary: When Wildrider is kicked out of the Decepticon base, he decides to get a human to keep him company. But the one he finds is a little...unusual. Not a romance, despite the title.





	1. In which Drag Strip races backwards

**Chapter 1: In which Drag Strip races backwards**

It was partly Wildrider’s fault, and he knew it. No, mostly his fault. After all, it wouldn’t have occurred to Drag Strip to try to win a race through the Nemesis while driving backwards if Wildrider hadn’t suggested it to him.

And it had been a great race right up till the end. Accelerating furiously to make up for the fact that he wasn’t so aerodynamic in reverse, Drag Strip had managed to stay in the lead while Wildrider hung back and thought about letting him win, mostly because that was easier than coping with Drag Strip when he lost. But as they neared the finish line (the door to Corridor C2), Wildrider couldn’t resist. He put on a sudden burst of speed, so of course Drag Strip did the same.

The door went down under the racecar’s momentum and was suddenly a ramp resting on a large shape beneath it. Wildrider couldn’t resist that either. He hit the gas pedal, roared up the ramp just behind Drag Strip and soared off it with a happy cry of “Wheeeee!”

That was when he noticed Megatron with his back to the wall of Corridor C2, staring at them as if unable to believe his optics, and that was when it occurred to him to wonder just what – or who – was under the ramp. At cannonpoint, he and Drag Strip picked up the door and helped a dazed Skywarp off the floor. Wildrider would have thought that he of all Decepticons would appreciate the funny side of the situation, but Skywarp seemed to have lost his sense of humor and Megatron didn’t look too amused either.

At any other time Wildrider knew they would have been turned over to Motormaster, who would have hit them both until they couldn’t stand unaided, much less race anywhere. Unfortunately the other Stunticons were away on some mission, and Wildrider had a feeling that Megatron wouldn’t stop at a simple beating.

Still, the Decepticon commander gave them a chance to account for themselves before he passed judgment, so they followed him to the control room and Wildrider spoke up. “Racing backwards was my idea.” Not that self-sacrifice was especially prized among the Stunticons, but he had always thought of Drag Strip as being younger than him somehow, which would have torqued Drag Strip off a complete three-sixty if he had known.

Megatron’s optics narrowed. “I don’t care whose imbecilic idea it was.”

Wildrider’s radio picked up an incoming transmission. “ _I won,_ ” Drag Strip said, though he didn’t sound too pleased about it.

“ _You sure did. When Megatron’s done with killing us we’ll party._ ”

“Since it’s apparently necessary to protect this base and everyone else in it from the two of you,” Megatron continued, gesturing at Drag Strip, “you are in solitary for three days.”

“ _Ow,_ ” Wildrider said over the radio. “ _Sorry about that._ ” It was the kind of punishment that Breakdown could have tolerated and Dead End would have loved, but Drag Strip didn’t like being by himself. _Maybe I can break in and smuggle him something._

“And you…” The fusion cannon swung to point at Wildrider. “…can get off this ship.”

“Huh?”

“If you want to tear around and smash up property, make it someone else’s. I don’t want to see you or hear you until Motormaster gets back and can keep you under some semblance of control.”

“But that’s three days too,” Drag Strip said.

“Now it’s four,” Megatron said.

“Shut up!” Wildrider said, forgetting to use his radio. “Uh, I was talking to Drag Strip, not you--”

“Five!” Megatron snapped. “And complete radio silence during that time. Do you think I wouldn’t know that you two were chattering just now?”

_Thanks to that snitch Soundwave_ , Wildrider thought. _Too bad he wasn’t under that slagging door._ He glared at the Communications Officer.

“Six!” Megatron rose from his chair. “Now get out before I make it any longer!”

Wildrider got out.


	2. In which Wildrider takes a vacation

The waves slapped the beach lightly and washed, foamy white, over Wildrider’s feet. _Tide’s coming in_ , he thought and wondered what to do next.

He retreated a few yards. The water washed over the spot on which he had touched down after flying out from the docking tower, and all traces he had left were gone. Wildrider sat down, not much caring if he got sand in his joints. Six days. Six days away from the Nemesis, away from everyone he knew, away from his team. It might as well have been six thousand.

_Think of this as a vacation_ , he decided. _If I’d gotten six days without patrol, without watch, without any duties, I’d be thrilled. So I’m thrilled now. Really I am. Now, what would I do with my vacation?_

The answer came at once: grab one of the other Stunticons and head out for some fun. And Wildrider knew that this problem wouldn’t be all that easy to solve, considering that there weren’t any other Stunticons nearby.

Unlike his teammates, he didn’t have any special preferences about whom he drove with or hung out with. He liked talking to Dead End because that always made him feel more alive, the same way a lightbulb looked brighter when it was in a pitch-dark room. Working with Breakdown was fun because he could charge head-on at anything that worried or frightened the Lamborghini, and he knew that if they ever got into real trouble, Breakdown could sabotage enemy vehicles or brig cells alike. He was sort of a Get Out Of Jail Free car. And Wildrider always enjoyed racing with Drag Strip, who was almost as reckless as he was but who could keep their assignments in mind and make sure they got what they came for.

Slag, at that moment he even felt as though Motormaster would be better company than the empty beach and the waves. Wildrider wouldn’t have been worried if all the Seacons had risen from the ocean trying to attack him, but the slow onset of loneliness left him off-balance. How in Primus’s name was he going to cope with six days of this?

_I could just go and have fun on my own,_ he thought. _Hit a highway and play tag with police cars._ That might provide enough speed and noise and excitement to distract him from the fact that he was alone. But how long could he keep going? He’d need to refuel and recharge, and what if he burst a tire or something in a high-speed chase? He couldn’t go back to the Constructicons’ repair bay before the six days were up.

_What am I going to do?_ he thought.

_Make a sandcastle,_ he decided.

If Wildrider didn’t get an answer to something right away, a crazy idea was sure to pop into his head and he never questioned whether or not to follow those impulses. Following them certainly beat sitting around doing nothing. So he scooped up a mound of damp sand and started patting it into shape, though instead of a castle he made the _Nemesis_ instead. That distracted him for a while, but when he was done he realized the sun had nearly set.

Worse, he had become accustomed to the sound of the ocean, so it was now a white-noise hum in the background, little better than silence. Wildrider shivered, washed his hands and looked unhappily at his little sandship.

_No, wait,_ he thought. _That’s what I need right now - a shelter. Just a place to stay for the night._

He transformed, hit the first sound file in his databanks, and headed inland for a few minutes. Guns N Roses belted out “Sympathy for the Devil” as he drove parallel to the beach; somehow he didn’t want to be too far from his real home until he figured out what to do next. The last fiery light of the sunset turned his paintjob to charcoal, made his tinted windows glow with a deep smoldering redness of their own – and fell on a small building in the distance.

Wildrider accelerated towards it, tires crunching sand and the spars of a picket fence that was in his way. He braked just before the house’s porch and looked more closely at the place. No lights in the windows or sounds from inside. Perhaps the humans who owned it were on vacation too.

Still, there was a garage that looked as though it would be large enough for him, so he blasted the door open, reversed and drove inside. He turned off his engine. He would have given anything to be back in his quarters, but he supposed the garage was better than nothing.

Music thundered off the walls of the small space, but after a few more moments Wildrider switched the sound off in a shaky, do-it-fast-and-don’t-look-back way. He had to concentrate, which never came easy to him, and he had a feeling that most Decepticons accomplished that particular activity in unnerving quietness.

_Go back to the Nemesis and plead with Megatron to just kill me?_ Doable, but whoever was on duty in the control room might have orders not to raise the docking tower for him.

_Find Motormaster and the others?_ He’d get into trouble, sure, but he’d get into trouble anyway when Motormaster found out about the backwards race and the door incident, and being beaten up wasn’t as bad as being alone. But Motormaster might simply send him away in case he messed up their mission as well.

_Slag it, this isn’t working!_ Wildrider growled in frustration and contemplated ramming his head into the wall until he went offline. Perhaps that would last for six days and at the end of that time he would wake up and--

A movement to one side caught his attention. Cautiously, paws soundless on cement floor, a cat slipped in from an open door and stopped, watching him.

“Hey,” Wildrider said, relieved to finally have some company.

The cat’s ears flicked forward at the sound, tail twitching. Then it circled him a little warily before crouching back, muscles bunching beneath its stripey orange fur. In one fluid motion, it leaped on to his hood and curled up there.

Wildrider felt disappointed. He didn’t mind little dusty prints on his armor, but it looked like the cat was just going to recharge on him, rather than distracting him from his solitude.

_No, wait, that’s it! That’s what I’m going to do. I’ll find someone to stay with me for the next six days, and problem solved. Haha, I might be crazy but I’m not stupid. Now, who’s going to be my new friend?_

He considered that while the cat rubbed itself against warm metal and made a soft engine-like rumbly sound. Not an Autobot, he decided. It would certainly be fun, trying to keep an Autobot under control, but he didn’t think even he was up for a six-day fight.

What about another ‘con, then? No, that wouldn’t work. All the other Decepticons had their own duties, which they wouldn’t thank him for disrupting, and the only ones small enough to fit in his passenger compartment were Soundwave’s cassettes, none of whom Wildrider particularly liked. _Okay, ‘cons out._

That left humans. They were the right size to ride in him and couldn’t really damage him even if they struggled. Plus, there were so many of them, so even if they splatted all over his dashboard, he could get replacements. Wildrider cheered up. _I’ll recharge now and first thing tomorrow I’ll head out and get me a human._

Santa Esmeralda’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” echoed off the garage’s walls, and the cat fled for cover as Wildrider settled down to recharge.


	3. In which Wildrider hits the news

The human paused on the sidewalk so that the little animal on the end of a leash could sniff at the grass. Wildrider watched him and wondered what was with humans and small furry animals. If he took the one, would he have to take the other as well? What if the animal made a mess of his passenger compartment? He wasn’t nearly as prissy as Dead End, but he wasn’t a complete slob either.

Engine idling, he evaluated the human, though he knew he wasn’t doing as good a job of it as Breakdown would have done. _Funny-looking, fluffy white hair_. Wait, that wasn't good. He’d heard that humans grew steadily lighter on top as they got older, and if they were too old they became feeble as well, just a step away from the smelter. Sure, there were plenty of replacement humans, but it would be dumb to start out with one who might spontaneously deactivate at any moment.

The grey Ferrari pulled away from the kerb and accelerated with a muffled roar that made both human and animal leap back. Wildrider giggled, pleased to be proven correct - the right human for him would be one who _didn’t_ freak out simply because he hit the gas. He sped up, knocked over a stop sign and raced down another street.

After a few hours, though, he was nowhere closer to finding someone. Most humans seemed to hear him coming and ran to get out of the way or hide. He thought of grabbing them anyway, but somehow he would have liked a human who stayed with him because he was fun to be with, rather than because the human had no other choice.

 _But if the humans keep running away, they’ll never know that I'm fun to hang out with, so should I catch one and keep it until it starts to like me? How long will that take?_ He cornered one of them, a female clutching a smaller specimen, but she started screeching at a pitch that hurt his audials. Wildrider was pretty sure he could do hysterical screaming all by himself - he didn’t need any help from humans in that quarter.

A police car charged at him, distracting him, so he shot out its wheels and sized up the cops as potential company. At least they didn’t seem too scared of him. _Nope,_ he thought as he drove away. If he was going to have a human, they couldn't be screaming and crying but they had better not be the kind who might put a bullet in his dashboard either. Striking that kind of happy medium seemed to be difficult.

He began to have a strange feeling that all his tires weren’t touching the road, which he didn’t understand, because they were. But the odd sensation kept growing, as if he was a helium balloon floating a little above solid ground, about to cut loose and drift off entirely. Wildrider had been told all his life that he was fragged in the head - as Dead End put it, sanity had a restraining order against him - but now he began to wonder if he was getting _more_ crazy.

Then again, he supposed that once he became crazy enough, he would no longer be able to tell the difference.

He left the busier roads and drove into the suburbs, his shadow sharp-edged in the noonday sun. With an effort he cut his speed (though he couldn’t bring himself to turn the music down) and took a street at random. It was a residential neighborhood that was mostly townhouses with lawns before them, and Wildrider stared ahead blankly, hating the silence, hating the emptiness and too preoccupied even to ram the cars parked along the road.

Thirty yards ahead, the door of one of the townhouses opened and a girl ran out. She stumbled down the steps, fell to her knees but was up again at once. Then she bolted across the road.

A man slammed the door open, pulling a gun as he did so. Wildrider heard a sharp crack as the man fired.

On the other side of the road, the girl dropped again, but Wildrider’s response was faster. He slammed the gas pedal, covering the distance between him and the girl in an instant, then hit the brakes. Tires and humans screamed simultaneously. Wildrider skidded sideways away from the girl and came to a halt at an angle across the road, between her and the gunman.

 _Nope, gunmen_. Another human rushed around the side of the townhouse and fired at him.

The bullet bounced off Wildrider’s forcefield and he burst out laughing. Some excitement, finally! This was more like it! He glanced at the girl, wondering if she had been damaged by the gunfire - if so, she wouldn’t be much good to him.

She held on to the door of a parked car just behind her and pulled herself up a little. Her jeans were scuffed and frayed at the knees, but she didn’t look as though she was leaking, so perhaps the gunman had missed. _Just a kid,_ Wildrider thought, _but those are some cool shades she’s got on._ They made her look like the people in _The Matrix_.

“Why are those guys shooting at you?” he said. The two men stared at him, and he guessed they had spotted the Decepticon sigil on his hood.

“I don’t know.” The girl’s shades were askew, and she pushed them into place with a hand that trembled. There were dusty smears on her white sweatshirt.

The gunmen ran in different directions, one to a blue Toyota parked at the side of the road and the other back behind the townhouse. _A chase?_ Wildrider thought as the first man started his car up. _This day’s just getting better._

He flicked the lock nearest to her and swung his door open. “Hop in.”

The girl didn’t hesitate. She reached out, fumbled at the door for a moment and then climbed into the passenger seat. Wildrider slammed the door shut just as the blue Toyota took off in a shriek of rapid acceleration. “Get the seatbelt on, kiddo,” he said. “We might be in for a little turbulence.”

The girl strapped herself in and Wildrider’s engine snarled into life. He shot ahead and then spun, fishtailing so hard that his trunk slammed into another parked car. The girl gasped at the impact, but he was already off, Enigma’s “Push the Limits” blaring from his speakers as he floored the gas pedal.

The Toyota shot through an intersection just before the lights turned red. Wildrider followed a few seconds later, smashing forcefield-to-bumper against a Mazda Miata that had driven forward as the lights changed. _Itty bitty midget cars like that should stay on golf courses_ , he thought as the Miata rocked backward from the impact. It didn’t damage him, of course, but it slowed him down just enough that the Toyota gained a little more ground.

“Where are we going?” the girl shouted. Wildrider hoped she wouldn’t get too nervous on him. He turned on his internal sensors and saw that she held on to the inside handle of the door tightly with one hand, though her other hand slid over the seat and on to his dashboard. Her touch was so light he couldn’t even feel it.

“We’re chasing the guy who tried to shoot you!” he yelled back. The only thing he wasn’t sure of was whether to blast the Toyota’s tires or follow it back to… well, to wherever it had come from.

“Who…” The girl’s voice was suddenly so quiet that he had to drop the volume on his stereo to hear her. “Who are you?”

“Name’s Wildrider. What’s yours?”

“Geri Lombardi.” She turned her head from side to side, still running one hand over his dashboard, over the speaker and radar screen and digital speedometer. _Dead End would pitch a fit about fingerprints on the glass_ , Wildrider thought, amused.

“Why are _we_ chasing him?” Geri said. “Couldn’t you just call the cops and describe him?”

“That wouldn’t be any fun!” _And as if any cops could do this,_ Wildrider thought as he swerved around a truck, missing it by inches. He saw the flash of blue less than half a mile ahead of him; they were already out of the suburbs, and the Toyota sped up where the road crossed a railway. It shot over the tracks an instant before a red light flashed and the barrier began to descend. Wildrider accelerated as well.

Geri took her free hand off his dashboard and touched the gearshift tentatively, though she didn’t try to move it. Wildrider liked that. He’d had humans ride shotgun twice before, but the first time there had been a lot of shrieks and pleas, and the second time the human had tried to take over his controls. Why anyone would try to drive when they had a perfectly competent Ferrari doing that for them – and doing it better and faster – was a mystery.

 _Still, I’ve got a good human this time around_ , he thought as he drove towards the crossing. The train’s whistle screamed as it headed closer. _Maybe they’re braver when they’re young?_

The train roared forward as Wildrider raced up to the crossing. The huge locomotive wasn’t moving nearly as fast as he was, but along with all its freight it weighed many tons more. He could have tapped his thrusters and sailed over it, but he wanted to see how his new friend would react when they all but kissed the deflector mounted to the front of the train.

No matter what Wildrider’s Vector Sigma-granted mental deficiencies were, he had been built with Cybertronic systems and subprocessors that calculated speeds and acceleration in nanoseconds. His gearshift jolted and Geri did the same, snatching her hand back. He hit the crossing, shattered the barrier and zoomed over the tracks. There was a _ssszt_ of static as the train barely touched the rearmost edge of his forcefield.

“Woohoo!” Wildrider bounced off the road on the other side of the crossing, then accelerated again. “So much for the little engine that couldn’t! Hey Geri, what’d you think of that?”

“I didn’t see it.” Her voice was steady and polite, but a firm undertone crept into it. “Mr. Wildrider, would you mind letting me out at the nearest--”

“You didn’t see me jump that train?” They were on a state highway now, a nice straight deserted stretch of road with a little bridge just ahead, and Wildrider knew he would catch up with the Toyota in seconds. He wondered whether to yell at the driver to stop, or to simply smash into the blue car.

“Mr. Wildrider,” Geri began.

“What’s with this ‘Mr’ crap? It’s just Wildrider.”

“Wildrider.” That time she sounded half-annoyed and half-tired, a little like the way Dead End spoke when he was trying to explain something to teammates who were uninterested or distracted. “I don’t know if you realize this, but I’m blind.”

“Huh?” Wildrider said, and forgot about the chase for a moment.

The Toyota hit its brakes just before the bridge and slewed hard to the left. It might have peeled away and escaped if Wildrider had cut his own speed to take the bridge, but since he was going at the same two hundred miles per hour, he rammed hood-first into the Toyota’s side. Geri was flung forward, her seatbelt locking to hold her back, but her free hand struck the radio’s controls. The music was abruptly cut off as the radio switched to a local station, and an announcer’s voice began to speak instead.

Spinning from the impact, the Toyota smashed through a guardrail as Wildrider reversed hastily. He had one glimpse of the driver’s terrified face before the Toyota plunged off the side of the road, crashing into the creek bank thirty feet below.

Wildrider rolled back on to the road just as the announcer said, “This is an activation of the Amber Alert system.” He stopped moving. “The Santa Clara Police Department is looking for a child who is believed to be in danger. The child, Geraldine Lombardi, is eleven years old, with brown hair, and was last seen wearing a white sweatshirt and blue jeans. Authorities say she has been abducted by a Decepticon in the shape of a grey Ferrari, license number WLDRDR, who should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Do not approach--”

The radio flicked off and there was a long pause.

“Oh… slag,” Wildrider said finally.


	4. In which Geri makes a phone call

Hands pushing down on her seat, Geri shifted closer to the door. “You’re a Decepticon?” she said.

“Stunticon.” Wildrider didn’t know what to do now. She still didn’t seem scared or upset, but the announcement that had just gone out... once the Autobots heard it, he wasn’t sure what would happen. They were protective enough of ordinary humans, so when they heard that a Stunticon had kidnapped a little blind girl, the entire lot from Optimus Prime to Bumblebee would be out gunning for a piece of him.

“I wondered why I heard your voice coming from two separate angles.” Geri was pressed against the door now, so that when she ran her fingers over it, fumbling a little, she had to bend her elbow at an awkward angle. “If you’re a Decepticon, why’d you help me?”

 _Cause I’m crazy. Everyone says so, and now I know they’re right._ Wildrider realized at the last moment that she was trying to get out. Nope. I can’t just leave her by the side of the road, not after going to all this trouble to get her in the first place. So just as her hand closed over the door handle, he slid the locks down. He did that as quietly as possible, but of course she heard it. Her fingers tightened around the handle so hard that her knuckles stood out like knots.

Wildrider glanced at the cloud of smoke and dust that drifted up from the wreck of the blue Toyota and decided to get out of there before he became wanted for vehicular homicide as well as kidnapping. Not that he cared about either, but he had a feeling that being hunted down too intensively might throw a wrench in any fun remaining for him. He started his engine again and drove over the bridge.

Geri let go of the door handle. “Where are you going?”

“I’m not sure, kiddo.” For the first time it occurred to Wildrider to access his navigation system and maps. We’re out of the city limits already. “Y’know, we could hide out in--”

“I’d like to get out, please,” Geri said. “Could you pull over at the nearest gas station?”

“But…” Wildrider sped up and tried to think of some way to change her mind. “There were two of those guys trying to kill you. The other one could still be waiting for you to go back home.”

“I didn’t say I was going back home.” She folded her arms. “I’m going to call my dad at the store. Or 911. Whoever I get first. They can pick me up from the gas station… and I’ll let the police know that you didn’t kidnap me, so they’ll stop searching for you.”

Even having all the Autobots after him wouldn't be as bad as being alone again, Wildrider thought miserably. “Are you sure?”

Geri nodded. “My dad’s going to be so worried about me.”

Wildrider knew that any other Decepticon, and maybe all of the Stunticons as well, would have told him to simply take the human with him if he wanted to. He was in charge there; he was the one with the firepower and the speed and the strength that gave him the right to do whatever he wanted. He didn’t need to listen to any human, especially not to a kid who couldn’t even see where she was going.

But what was the point of having a prisoner? He needed a friend who would keep him company and talk to him, not a hostage who (for all her physical weakness) seemed like the type who would clam up on him if she was really torqued off. And while her family worrying about her wasn’t as bad as his missing the other Stunticons – for one thing, human groups weren’t gestalt teams – he supposed it wouldn’t make things any better either.

So he changed lanes, slowed down without his usual slam of brakes and pulled into the parking lot of the first gas station he saw, not much caring whether the clerk inside was calling the Autobots or not.

He drew up beside the payphones and flicked his door open, though he didn’t switch his engine off. “There,” he said curtly.

“Thanks,” Geri said, and got out. Keeping one hand resting lightly on his side, she held her other arm stretched out and began to work her way around him. _She can’t see where the phones are_ , Wildrider thought.

Part of him – an upset, lonely, resentful part that reminded him a little of Drag Strip – told him to simply drive away and leave her there if she couldn’t stand to be around him. For a moment he thought of doing that.

Then another part of him asked if he really wanted to sink to the level of the humans who had shot at her. Wildrider enjoyed causing havoc and mayhem on a grand scale – demolition derbies, leveling buildings, shooting Aerialbots out of the sky, that kind of thing – but leaving a blind girl to fumble around searching for a phone seemed kind of small and petty in comparison.

“Three feet to your left,” he said.

“Appreciate that,” Geri said as she pushed her shades up on to her forehead. She put the nearest receiver to her ear, holding it in place against her shoulder as she slipped coins into a slot. Her fingers felt the phone’s buttons, then pressed a combination. “Hi, this is Geri. Is my dad there?”

 _I might as well fill up while I’m here_ , Wildrider thought as he checked his fuel levels and self-diagnostics. Then once he heard the cops heading that way, he would take off and… and go someplace else.

“Who are--” Geri began. There was a long pause. “What?”

“What’s wrong?” Wildrider said. Unlike most of his teammates, he never stayed in a sour mood for long. He supposed that was another fault of his, the inability to hold on to any emotional state other than his default ready-for-action.

Slipping her hand over the mouthpiece, Geri turned to look at him and he had to remind himself that she didn’t really see him. Her eyes were wide and filled with fear. “The guy who answered said they have my dad, and if I want to see him again I… I have to…”

Without thinking, Wildrider transformed, reached down and took the receiver from her. He had meant to ask a few questions of his own, but since the phones were made for creatures both shorter and weaker than him, one tug snapped the cord and separated the base of the phone from the receiver. Wildrider was left holding it between thumb and forefinger while Geri stared up at him in bewilderment.

“What did you just do?” she said. Wildrider couldn’t help giggling, and Geri snapped, “This isn’t funny! My dad could be…” Her voice was suddenly hoarse, and her mouth trembled.

A siren wailed far away. Wildrider dropped the useless receiver and transformed as the sound grew louder. “I’m heading out,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

Geri bit her lip, then reached for the nearest door. Wildrider flicked the lock open and she scrambled into the driver’s seat, belting up at once. _Good, she might be upset but she’s not stupid._

“Will you help us?” she said quietly.

Motormaster would kill him if he said yes, even if he was only doing it so he could have fun. It was one thing to kidnap humans and toy with them; it was another thing entirely to give in when they asked for help.

But since he had picked her up, he hadn’t had that strange feeling that he was growing more and more disconnected from reality. _Okay then._ He’d get into trouble for it later, but he had always lived in the present; he didn’t waste time worrying about something that was going to happen to him in the future.

And it beat being alone.

“Sure, kiddo,” he said as he tore out of the parking lot, smashing a parked car out of his way in a spray of broken glass. His engine revved and tires screeched as he turned onto the road at too sharp an angle, Bon Jovi’s “Welcome To Wherever You Are” wailing out from his speakers.

Geri braced herself against the door with one hand and adjusted the volume with the other. “Let’s find someplace quiet,” she said. “I need to think about what to do.”

“Ugh, not too quiet. I might need to think too.”


	5. In which Wildrider has a plan

“Brace for impact!” Wildrider yelled. A moment later they smashed through a wall of the huge department store.

“I don’t believe this,” Geri said after she had struggled back up to a sitting position. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the shriek of an alarm system. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just drive up to the front?”

“That’s no fun. And why’d they call the place ‘Target’ if they didn’t want anyone to hit it?” Wildrider fired off a few shots to get the attention of whichever humans seemed uninjured and before three minutes were up, all the supplies they needed were in his trunk. He slammed his gearshift into reverse and hit the accelerator, his steering wheel spinning. Even with her seatbelt in place, Geri was tossed from side to side.

“D-do you always drive like this?” she said.

“Nah. Sometimes I go faster. Like _this_.” Wildrider rocketed up the driveway, striking an oncoming police car with the edge of both forcefield and fender and sending the black-and-white into a spin. He giggled and tore off with a screech of tires.

“I’ll just keep my mouth shut from now on.” Geri hunched down in her seat.

“No, don’t! I hate it when things are quiet.” Wildrider slowed down. “Okay, we got all the fuel and supplies you need, and paint for me. You wanna catch a movie now?”

“No!” Geri said. “My father could be dead, in case you’ve forgotten!” Since Wildrider had forgotten, he tried to think of some way to change the subject. “And how would I watch the movie?”

“Oh, right, the optics thing. Couldn’t you get those replaced?” Hook could have done it in no time. “Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, not being able to see.”

“I think we have different ideas of fun.” Now she sounded tired as well as annoyed, and Wildrider thought that humans could be very touchy. “And no, they can’t be replaced.”

“Too bad.” Wildrider wondered what would happen to him if he ever became permanently blind. He supposed he could still function in a merge, which at least meant a one-legged Menasor would not need to hop into a battlefield, but the rest of the time he would be worse than useless. _I’d end up deactivated sooner or later,_ he thought, _and I’d be the one doing the deactivating._

Geri shrugged. “You can’t miss what you’ve never had.”

“What, you’ve always been like that?” And here he was thinking it was because of another attack she survived.

“Uh-huh,” Geri said, as if there was nothing at all wrong about it. “Why? You sound surprised.”

Wildrider said nothing, because he couldn’t understand how humans endured processes which gave rise to such malfunctions, damaging them from the get-go, creating them flawed. He could almost hear Megatron’s voice saying that was typical of organics – inefficient, defective, one more thing that destined them for destruction.

Abruptly he swerved off the highway and took a narrower road that headed up into thickly wooded hills and looked as though it would turn into a hiking trail soon; it had just occurred to him that meeting another Decepticon at that point would be as disastrous as running into the Autobots. No, it would be worse. Killing Autobots was one thing; deactivating another Decepticon to make sure Megatron never found out he was harboring a human… well, that was a different matter.

“You okay?” Geri said, leaning forward.

“I’m fine, kiddo,” Wildrider said, feeling relieved as soon as they were out of sight of anyone who wasn’t actively searching for them. He knocked over a sign about cougars – those were fuzzy kittens for anyone used to Ravage – as he pulled off the trail and parked under the trees, twigs and dry leaves crunching under his tires. His engine knocked softly as it began to cool down.

He hoped Geri was in a better state of mind as well. After they had driven away from the gas station, she had asked to make another call to her father’s base, just in case whoever had spoken to her the first time had been bluffing. Wildrider was used to orders from other Decepticons, threats from Autobots and pleas for mercy from humans, but polite requests were new enough that he found himself turning into another gas station before he could think twice.  
He pulled out almost as fast, since all that Geri did was dial the same number on a pay phone and ask if her father was there. Then she replaced the receiver.

“Who answered this time?” Wildrider said curiously.

“A police officer.” She crossed her arms, hands holding her elbows, and looked down.

“Why didn’t you tell them what that guy said to you the first time you called?” The human had given her a location, which was out in the boondocks according to Wildrider’s nav system, and had told her to be there by the next day at the latest.

“What good would that do?” Geri said without raising her head. “It’s not illegal to give someone your address and ask them to meet you there. And if they find out I told the police, what’ll happen to my dad?”

Not having any answer to that, Wildrider resorted to his usual method of filling in the silence and turned the radio on. Unfortunately he got a local station where someone stupid even by human standards was talking excitedly about the “two related kidnappings” and speculating on whether the Decepticons were responsible for both, which irritated him and made Geri keep wiping her eyes with the cuffs of her sweatshirt.

After that she was very quiet until he decided they needed supplies. Planning ahead had never been Wildrider’s strong point, so he was pleased about the supplies. Even if Geri had somehow been able to forage for herself in the woods, he didn’t think she would last for long against a cougar.

 _Why would a human want her, though?_ he wondered. Badly enough to kidnap someone else to get her. Humans were weird and he rarely understood why they acted the way they did, but he had a feeling that he needed to make sense of this situation, and to do it fast.  
Geri got out and felt her way along his side until she reached the trunk, taking out a pillow, a blanket and two candy bars before she climbed slowly back into the front seat. _Maybe she’s an actress or a celebrity or something_ , Wildrider thought.

“So, who are you really?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“C’mon, you can tell me,” Wildrider said in his cutest, most coaxing voice, though for some reason that made the girl pull back with a wary look. “What’s your real name?”

Geri unlocked one of the doors. “I told you my real name.”

“Well, okay,” Wildrider said, locking the door again. “Are you very rich, then?”

“Do I look rich?”

“I can’t tell with humans.” Wildrider huffed air through his intakes. “So I guess you’re not an heiress or anything?”

Geri’s forehead crinkled. “No. My dad manages an auto parts store.”

“Cool! I’ll drop by there if I need anything.”

“Please don’t. We’ll FedEx you whatever you want.”

“Okay.” Wildrider remembered what he had been trying to work out. “So if you’re not rich, why are these slaggers trying to kidnap you?”

“Wish I knew,” Geri said, curling up against the back of the seat. She pulled the blanket over her shoulders and spoke quietly. “When I got home and that guy grabbed me and told me to shut up and come with him, I thought he was one of those… those pervs you see on _America’s Most Wanted_.” Wildrider wondered what she was talking about. “But there were two of them with guns, waiting for me. That just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing they warn you about in No Go Tell, you know what I mean?”

“Uh, no, but… you don’t need to explain.” Wildrider had a feeling that he was better off not knowing. “You sure you don’t have anything on you worth shooting for?”

“Like what?” Geri tilted the seat back and stretched along it.

“I dunno. A really valuable piece of jewelry?”

“All I’ve got on me is my library card and a chapstick, and if they’d asked nicely I’d have given them the chapstick.” She closed her eyes.

Wildrider endured the silence for as long as he could, which was about three minutes. “Hey Geri, wake up!”

“What?” She sat up with a start.

“I have another idea,” Wildrider said. “What did you say your last name was, Lombardi? All right, what kind of name is that?”

“Wildrider…” She rested her forehead in one hand and sighed. “It’s Italian. Why?”

Wildrider played his trump card. “Maybe your dad has mob connections and some rival crime boss has taken him out.”

Geri lowered her hand and stared ahead at his dashboard. “Weird, that news broadcast just said ‘armed and dangerous’. It didn’t mention ‘totally cracked’. Look, the closest my dad ever came to the mob was when he watched _The Godfather_ , and if I was a Mafia princess I think I’d have known about it by now.” She lay back down. “Believe me, there’s nothing special about me.”

“Except you being blind,” Wildrider said. Her optic ridges came together. “What? Don’t humans call that kind of malf… uh, that kind of thing special, like the Special Olympics?”

“I guess.” The lines smoothed themselves off her face, though she didn’t look any happier. “I guess it is kind of special – it’s caused by some genetic condition that only three thousand people in this country have.”

“Wow,” Wildrider said. A rare genetic condition… did that make her a mutant? “You sure you didn’t get something cool to balance it out, like a secret power?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but no.” She closed her eyes. “Now could I please get some sleep?”

“Okay,” Wildrider said, and put on some appropriate music, Roxette’s “Sleeping In My Car”, at which point Geri threw her pillow at the dashboard and informed him that going to sleep meant doing so in peace (Wildrider made gagging noises) and quiet (Wildrider pointed out that he transformed into a Ferrari, not a hearse). Finally they compromised. Wildrider traveled two hours to a drive-in theater, where he could watch the movie without waking Geri up, and once that was over he slipped into recharge as well.

He came back online just before dawn and drove back to the secluded hiking trail, turning over an idea in his mind. He could always smash into whatever house the human was hiding in, but Geri’s father would probably not be in the same place. Even humans weren’t that dumb. So if he did that and her father got deactivated as a result, she’d be mad at him.

 _But if I find out where he’s been stashed, I can grab him and get going. Okay, but how to find out without alerting anyone?_ He thought that over. _What if the slagger believes he’s won?_ If the human got Geri without a fuss, he wouldn't stick around – he’d take her back to his base or to whoever was behind all this, and that was probably where her father was being held too. So all Wildrider had to do was tail him, and problem solved. _Not bad!_

“Are you insane?” Geri said after she woke up and heard the plan. “You want me to just go up to the bastard who took my dad and let him do whatever he wants with me?” She unlocked the door again.

“Quit playing with the lock!” Wildrider said. What did she think she was going to do – walk off and fall down a ravine? Though he supposed she wasn’t the first human who would have preferred that to hanging out with him. “Look, kiddo, they don’t want to kill you--”

“How the heck would you know? And don’t call me kiddo! I’m going to be twelve next month.”

“Well, that makes you younger than me!” _Though not by a whole lot._ “So I’m the more experienced one here. And if that guy really wants you dead, he could’ve done it when they grabbed you in your house, right? But they only shot at you when you were trying to get away. So they must’ve had orders to bring you in alive if they could.”

Geri was silent for what felt like a long time. “What if he’s really angry and… and takes it out on me?” she said finally.

“If he hits you I’ll turn him into roadkill. But he won’t have the time. See, once you’re there he’ll want to get going in case the cops trailed you. So he’ll hit the road with you and I’ll be following.”

“You’re sure about all this.” Geri’s voice was so toneless that it wasn’t clear whether she was asking a question or not.

“Yup.” Wildrider had plenty of faults, but a lack of confidence in himself had never been one of them. “Takes one criminal to figure out another.”

“I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”

“Sure you do. You can go to the cops. I’ll let you off outside a gas station and wait till they get there. Slag, you can go to the ‘bots if you like, no hard feelings.” He paused for effect. “Or you can trust me.”

“I do trust you. Sort of. When you’re not driving, anyway.”

“So… hardly ever?” Wildrider sagged down on his shocks in what he hoped was a dramatically crushed pose. “Thanks heaps.”

Geri ignored that. “But this isn’t about trust. It’s about whether the bait in the trap gets eaten or not.”

“Hey,” Wildrider said as quietly as he could. “I’ll be really close by, kid--uh, Geri. Now, can you do the hood?”

Geri climbed out and complained about something called “whiplash” (which Wildrider didn’t understand – had someone hit her with a whip?) but with some direction she spray-painted his hood grey to cover the Decepticon symbol. Wildrider thought that wasn’t likely to fool even the dumbest Autobot, but it might keep the humans in the dark for at least a little longer. Then another idea struck him and he transformed.

“What are you doing?” Geri said as he snapped open the armor plating over his chest.

“Something Hook might have to fix later.” It wasn’t the first time Wildrider had looked down to see his own internal circuitry laid bare, but it was definitely the first time he’d been the direct cause of that. He kept one optic on his diagnostic queue, prodding at components until he all but dislodged his emergency beacon, which popped up in the queue at once. Then he yanked it free.

“Owww! Slagging Primus, does Vortex do this kind of thing for fun? And they say I’m crazy.” The beacon wasn’t large, so it could fit inside Geri’s sweatshirt, though she said she felt as though she was smuggling a textbook. Their visit to the department store had resulted in some spare clothes, though, so she pulled a thick jacket on and buttoned it up the front.

“There you go,” Wildrider said. “It’s activated, so even if I lose you in traffic I can trace you.” That made her look a little less petrified, so he decided not to mention the fact that the beacon would register on any of the other Stunticons’ sensors if they were within a thousand-mile radius. The thought of Motormaster tracking that signal down to find a human holding it was definitely not a fun one.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said finally, and Geri got up without a word. Once he had transformed and she was inside, though, she clutched both the door handle and the seatbelt tightly, and for once Wildrider didn’t think his driving had anything to do with that.

Also for the first time, he began to doubt himself. What if he was making a mistake, handing her over to a kidnapper who’d been ready to shoot her when she ran? What if the guy decided that a live prisoner was too risky? Even a fully-grown human was small, slow and weak compared to a Stunticon, but what if he couldn’t get to Geri in time? _Slag it, if only I wasn’t alone!_

He drove back down to the highway, for once forgetting to turn his radio on. _I’m not used to coming up with plans by myself, that’s all it is._ When they had a mission, Motormaster told them what to do, and if it was at all complicated, Breakdown figured out how to do it while Dead End pointed out all the things that might possibly go wrong. For a moment Wildrider thought of comming them, but he decided against it. Even if he somehow escaped Motormaster’s attention and didn’t disrupt their special secret mission, the other Stunticons might not be in too much of a hurry to get involved in what looked like a weird, complicated human situation.

And besides, she had asked him for help – not any of the others, him. He could handle it.

He turned on to a side road that stretched out emptily into the distance with only a few buildings here and there. Trees clustered around them and Wildrider could see fields between the trunks. He would have grimaced if he wasn’t in alt-mode; he liked the smooth shiny hardness of cities and roadways, not the soft organic growths that seemed to cover so much of the ground like a green version of Cosmic Rust.

“There should be a house up ahead.” Geri’s voice was very quiet. “Brown, with a barn behind it.”

“I see it,” Wildrider said, and pulled over. He couldn’t afford to be seen, and this location gave him hardly any cover. He popped the door lock. “Cross the road when you get out, and you’ll be about fifty feet away from it. There’s a Dodge station wagon parked outside.” _Should be really easy to follow that._

Geri got out and fished her shades out of a pocket, but they were broken. Wildrider wasn’t surprised; when he was driving, other humans had broken bigger things, like their necks. “Well, here goes nothing,” she whispered.

The front door shut. Geri touched the side of it, her hand flat and light against grey plating for a moment – not long enough for him to tell if her fingers were trembling – before she stepped away. Her hair was tangled and her jeans still dusty, but her shoulders straightened as she began to walk.

Wildrider turned, holding his speed low as he slipped across the road and behind the nearest house. He covered the fifty feet in a few seconds but kept the trees between him and anyone who was watching from across the road.

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising” thrummed from his speakers. His engine growled softly.

Geri touched the side of the station wagon, then the peeling fence that surrounded the house. Without looking back, she worked her way up the cracked porch steps and knocked at the door. It opened and she was inside in the next moment, as if she had been swallowed up by it.

With a click, the door closed. Wildrider revved his engine – he had never been able to wait patiently for long. There was no sign of anything happening in the small house and he wished humans came with built-in comm links. At least that way he would know what was happening to Geri.

Iron Maiden’s “2 Minutes to Midnight” began to play.

A motor started up. Wildrider nearly leaped forward but stopped himself just in time. _Finally, they’re on the move!_ The sound came from the barn behind the house, but he guessed the humans had another car parked there.

Except the sound was weird somehow… an engine, but not like a car’s… and he could hear a spinning noise as well, sort of like a propeller--

 _That’s not a barn,_ he thought, _it’s a fragging hangar!_

He tore forward across the road, ramming the station wagon out of his way, and tapped his thrusters. He leaped fifteen feet in the air and came down on the roof of the house, which was enough for him to see the light airplane that rolled out across the field, its speed increasing.

Then the roof collapsed under a ton of metal and Wildrider crashed down into the house, a dinner table shattering beneath him. He fired, blowing the rear wall to splinters, and shot out of the ruined house. The plane lifted off and was airborne.

Wildrider almost hit his thrusters again. No, if he damaged that Aerialbot-wannabe and it crashed… Snarling, he slammed the gas instead. The plane was climbing higher and higher, but it didn’t matter. He had to keep up with it somehow, no matter where it went.

A siren howled in the distance as he raced after the speck in the sky.


	6. In which Wildrider plays crazy

_No choice,_ Wildrider thought. _I have to fly._

The plane, as well as being faster, soared over waterways, buildings and everything other obstacle before him. Wildrider had hoped to trail Geri’s kidnappers unnoticed through traffic (as unnoticed as he ever was, anyway) but that plan of his had gone down about as well as Starscream’s periodic attempts to help Megatron kick the leadership habit. The best he could do now was follow at a distance and hope none of the humans looked back to see a Stunticon on their tail.

He transformed, anti-grav kicking in, and activated his thrusters. Flying wasn’t half as much fun as driving, of course, but it beat losing the plane. _I’ll stay about half a mile behind_ , he thought as air rushed over him and hummed in his audials. At least his radar picked up his emergency beacon in the plane ahead.

Then his radar picked up something else – closing in fast behind him – just as the humming sound grew louder. Still flying, Wildrider turned to see a red-and-white helicopter narrowing the distance between them, rotors a blur.

“Where’s the child, Stunticon?” Blades yelled at him.

Wildrider reacted instinctively, braking his flight and pulling his scattershot gun from subspace. In the moment it took him to do that, Blades – far faster in the air – hit his maximum velocity and hit Wildrider as well. Metal impacted on energy with a sharp electric _hissss_ , rotors whap-whap-whapping so loudly Wildrider couldn’t hear his own laughter. The Protectobot helicopter was on top of him, but his forcefield protected him from damage and he could hardly fail to miss at point-blankrange--

Except Blades transformed and was suddenly a deadweight. Wildrider’s own flight mechanisms faltered as they tried to carry the Protectobot as well, and he dropped out of the sky. He fired in the next instant and Blades was gone, but it was already too late. Something green came up at him fast. He spaced the gun and transformed, hitting the ground with the edge of his roof and rolling over until he was on his tires again.

His forcefield still held, though, and when he looked around he saw he had landed on a knoll overlooking a highway with heavy traffic. _The Protectosnots won’t chase me through that – they’ll endanger too many humans_. He gunned his engine and roared down the knoll, slipping into the flow of traffic with all the grace of a shark in a tuna shoal.

Feeling more confident at once, he kept one optic on his radar and the other on the cars before, behind and to both sides of him as he wove in and out of the lanes. It didn’t matter that the traffic was bumper-to-bumper. The hard shoulder and the median were just alternate lanes for him and the occasional laserbolt or snap of, “Outta my way! Stunticon terrorist comin’ through!” did wonders as well. _Haha, I’d like to see that lumbering moron Hot Spot try to follow me through--_

A riderless motorcycle appeared in his rearview mirror.

_Oh, slag._

Wildrider could have groaned aloud. That particular Protectobot was narrower and more maneuverable than him, slipping fluidly through the traffic and coming up fast on the right, between the Ferrari and an empty school bus. _Okay, if you want to be the filling in a metal sandwich,_ Wildrider thought, and slewed hard to the right.

Groove’s vaporators flipped down and he fired at the road. Wildrider never knew what was in the blast, just that it literally lifted the motorcycle off the ground. Groove leaped ahead and Wildrider crashed into the school bus, rocking the larger vehicle to one side.

A siren screamed as Groove landed on the asphalt just ahead, bouncing a little. He raced ahead, only to hit his brakes and come to a skidding stop perpendicular to the highway, blocking the way. The school bus lurched into the guardrail to one side of the highway, recovered at the last moment and rolled ahead, wheels fighting for purchase on damp earth.

Wildrider slammed the brakes on as well and managed to halt less than twenty feet from the motorcycle. The Protectobot was lighter and less well-defended, but he hadn’t moved. That should have made him a collection of scrap metal to be picked out of a Stunticon’s tire-treads later, but at that moment Wildrider couldn’t help wondering whether to tell the Protectobot what had actually happened. _He didn't even attack me before, so maybe he'll listen--_

“C’mon, Wildrider, let her go,” Groove called out. “That’s not cool, snatching a kid. You want a hostage that bad, let her go and take me.”

_Forget it_ , Wildrider thought. His audials picked up the buzz of rotors as Blades started to descend, twenty feet behind him. Oncoming traffic halted. “Nope,” he said, raising his voice to be heard. “She’s a lot more fun than you.”

“Fun?” Blades snarled as he touched down across all three lanes, parallel to Groove. “What the slag are you doing to her?”

They were trying to box him in, not that it would work. There was an exit ramp to his left if he had wanted to escape, which he didn’t. At least not until he made slagging sure the Protectobots wouldn’t follow. Groove was the easier target, but knocking out their air support was more important.

He threw his transmission into reverse just as Streetwise roared up the exit ramp. Wildrider turned to face the new threat, trying to bring his guns to bear, but he was almost stationary and the Protectobot interceptor was moving at full speed. Streetwise slammed into him in a broadside collision.

All four of Wildrider’s tires left the ground and he flipped over on to his roof. The force of the impact sent him rolling into the weakened guardrail, which gave way completely. The world turned to a revolving blur. Wildrider plummeted down the slope on the other side of the highway and landed with a heavy thud on his side in a patch of wet dirt.

For a moment he couldn’t move. Even though his forcefield still held and he hadn’t taken significant structural damage, he was shaken up and disoriented. And if the other two Protectobots were there as well, and they merged…

_Not going down that easily,_ he thought and flexed two doors open to push himself back on to his tires. That was when a brilliant flash of light went off, turning everything to white blankness. Wildrider’s left optic shut down automatically; the right, since he had been lying on his right side and it was partially smeared with dirt, stayed online.

He reeled on two tires, his center of gravity momentarily unbalanced, then thudded down hard on to all four wheels. _Frag it, can’t see from one--no, wait, if the ‘bots think I can’t see at all--_

He shrieked, which wasn’t too difficult to do since his left optic was little more than a cluster of pain sensors all operating on maximum. Streetwise and Groove stood high above him on the slope, photon pistols in their hands, and there was a thrum of rotors as Blades transformed and began to rise into the air just behind them.

“You slagging cowards!” Wildrider screamed, and fired straight ahead at the slope, lasers blasting chunks of earth that flew into the air and spattered him. He crawled back a little, twisting from side to side as if unsure where the next attack would come from. “Guess it takes three of you to tackle one Stunticon! Hey, maybe you want to merge before my optics come back online?”

“Considering you abducted a blind human, that’s only justice,” Streetwise said. “Now tell us where she is!”

“Well, she _was_ in my passenger compartment, but thanks to you she’s all leaky and deactivated now!” Wildrider tossed off his most manic giggle, which sounded insane even to his audials. “Good thing my windows are the same color as squishy insides, huh?”

“You’re dead, Stunticon!” Blades yelled and shot forward.

Streetwise shouted something about taking the perp into custody, but Wildrider had already triggered his thrusters. Hiis front half jolted sharply off the ground, and both his forward-mounted guns fired.

With only one optic, his depth perception wasn’t good and the blast hit Blades side-on rather than taking out his rotors, but it sent the helicopter reeling into Groove. They went down together in a flailing heap and Wildrider laughed again as he smashed his accelerator flat. He hurtled backwards into a near-empty road – human vehicles were all but crashing into each other to stay out of the way – and turned simultaneously, engine revving as he shot forward again.

In his rearview mirror he saw Streetwise transform and plunge down the slope after him, apparently realizing that he was a little less blind than he’d let on. Wildrider swerved and dodged through traffic but the Protectobot hung on stubbornly, and the sound of his siren blaring filled the air even when Wildrider finally lost sight of him in the traffic.

_Stupid fragger,_ Wildrider thought as he started to lose his temper. The plane had already disappeared from his radar, though his emergency beacon was still active and pinging.

_I’m not the only one with sensors, though – the ‘bot’s got them too. He’d never have hit me if he thought I had a human inside, and now he’s tracking me._ Wildrider wondered if there was any way to get off that radar short of simply driving until Streetwise ran out of fuel.

_Or until more of them show up_ , he thought as five new blips appeared on his radar. _Great. Aerialbots. So much for taking out their air support._

Abruptly one of the blips disappeared. Wildrider’s headlights flashed a blink and he wondered if the rest of them would somehow vanish as well. No, just the one, probably the idiot who flew into buildings. _Haha, he must’ve knocked himself out--_

_Wait a second, if he’s offline, he doesn’t show up on my radar. If I’m offline, will I be off their screens as well?_

Wildrider raced under a bridge, shouldering a motor home out of the way, and a warning flashed in his diagnostic queue; his forcefield couldn’t take much more punishment. He ignored that. He could take himself out easily, just by hitting something hard enough, but then he would wake up in the Autobot brig. No, he had to go offline but keep moving somehow...

He saw an open eight-car carrier on the access road that ran parallel to the highway. The carrier wasn’t traveling nearly as fast as he was, but it had three vehicles on its upper rack and a bulky station wagon below. _Good enough,_ Wildrider thought and fired at the nearest car to give Streetwise a little distraction. He peeled off and raced down the nearest exit, heading for the carrier at top speed.

The ramp was lifted, but that made no difference. Wildrider flicked his thrusters and plunged into the huge transporter as he deliberately turned his forcefield off.

The station wagon was chained or clamped in place; he didn’t have time to see which it was before he rammed it head-on. His grille crumpled, his headlights and radiator broke simultaneously and his hood flew up. There was an instant of shattering pain. Then he was falling, falling into the silence he had always feared - dark and endlessly empty - and it closed over him.


End file.
